Re-imagining the US-Mexico border - Presentation by Mary Watkins

Liberation psychologist Mary Watkins asks: “What does it look like when we refuse to accept an imposed limit, such as the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and instead not only contest it but create very different modes of being that resist and transfigure it?” She will begin by describing the functions of transborder art on the Mexican side of the U.S. wall at the border, and continue by assessing other examples of embodied prophetic imagination, such as bi-national peace parks, worker centers for those without documents, enfranchisement in municipal elections for those without documents, sanctuary provisions in cities and towns, and needed changes in federal immigration policy. In doing so, she hopes to help animate an embodied prophetic imagination of how to live differently amidst the imposed borders in our nations, cities, and towns.

Mary Watkins, Ph.D., is a core faculty member in the M.A./Ph.D. Depth Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Coordinator of its community and ecological fieldwork and research, and Co-Chair of its specialization in community psychology, liberation psychology, and ecopsychology. She is the co-author of Toward Psychologies of Liberation and Talking With Young Children About Adoption, author of Waking Dreams and Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues, and a co-editor of Psychology and the Promotion of Peace. She works at the interfaces between Euro-American depth psychologies and psychologies of liberation from Latin America, Africa and Asia. She has worked as a clinical psychologist with adults, children, and families, and has also worked with small and large groups around issues of immigration, peace, alternatives to violence, envisioning the future, diversity, vocation, and social justice. She was a member of a participatory research team at PUEBLO, a Latino rights grassroots organization. Their work collecting testimonios from immigrants without documents in Santa Barbara has resulted in a book In the Shadows of Paradise: Testimonies from the Undocumented Immigrant Community in Santa Barbara. She is a Peacebuilding Associate of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding, and a member of the national Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR).